Thursday, September 27, 2012

The Best Croods Poster Yet!

Wow, what a poster! Chock full of colorful critters, saturated scenery and more bare feet than Quentin Tarantino's fetishistic filmography, this one is a Thanksgiving feast for the eyes. While I'm planning to let you soak this one in without too much of my alliterate interference, if you'll indulge me for just a minute more, I'd like to share the first five things that hit me as extra-amazing about this image.

1. The saber-tooth tiger actually has the humungous head that it had in Chris Sanders' Comic-Con poster! A small stylistic touch to be sure, but one that I'm delighted made it into the finished film.

2. The Crood's clothes seem to reflect their "animal inspirations." Remember how in last month's Entertainment Weekly piece, co-director Kirk de Micco described Gran as a "ferocious, almost crocodile-type woman"? Well, look at the crocodile-type skin she's wearing here. Again, a small stylistic touch, but one that adds a li'l bit more character to each...well, character.

3. The colors. Look at the foliage. Look at that fur! What the Toy Story films were to primary colors, The Croods seems to be to every saturated shade of the spectrum. I also love the way the background is shown as slightly blurred by mist and clouds. One of my favorite things about Chris Sanders' first film, Lilo & Stitch, were the gorgeous watercolor backgrounds. This poster captures something similarly beautiful.

4. The critters. As a little kid with far too much time and scrap paper on his hands, I used to try and draw every character from every movie, cartoon, comic book, and TV show that I adored. I was like one of those ancient Biblical scribes who made it their mission to copy the entire Bible by hand. Only, in my case, my spiritual calling was to draw the entire junkyard gang from Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. If I'd had access to this poster back then? Yikes. Drawing all of the animal amalgams on this poster would've kept me busy for WEEKS. Not only that, I'd have had the youngest documented case of wrist arthritis ever.

5. The release date. I've know that the film was coming out on March 22 for quite some time. Still, seeing it printed on this poster makes it that much more real. Oh, and did I mention that my birthday is in March? HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ME!